Phillip Parotti: Shamefully Underappreciated

Hi All. This post is a shout-out to one of my favourite authors, Phillip Parotti, who wrote three outstanding historical novels about the Trojan War. Most novels that depict the legendary siege are more accurately called mythohistorical, rather than historical, because their content usually revolves around mythical characters--Helen, Achilles, Odysseus--who were descended from gods. Parotti's novels focus on humans, their talents and their failings, and how people do not need divine intervention to bring grand tragedy on themselves. Sadly, all three of Parotti's books are out of print and can only be had second hand. Prices vary. Two Parotti short stories, 'A Gathering of Kites' and 'Urns of Ash,' are also set in the ancient world and are tough to track down, although worth the effort to do so.

The first of his novels, The Greek Generals Talk, is told from the viewpoint of the lesser commanders, the ones who survived to tell their war stories decades after its end. Quick, without looking it up, name as many Greek Trojan War generals as you can. You probably came up with Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus and Ajax, but few people can readily recall anyone else. Few can name Machaon, Diomedes or Thoas. The tragedies of the big names are well known, so Parotti chooses not to retell them. Instead, he has the lesser leaders, the men who worked on the ground with the rank-and-file, talk about what really happened at Troy.

In his second novel, The Trojan Generals Talk, Parotti gives the lesser Trojan generals their say. Parotti was an officer in the U.S. Navy for man years, and here  displays a keen understanding of how politics and nepotism can undermine a military effort by putting the wrong men in command at a time of national crisis. (As I write this, the U.S. is in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the country is led an unqualified leader whose false statements will only make things worse.) Parotti, who published this book in 1988, is no soothsayer, but instead makes a timeless commentary on the importance leadership has on a nation's fate.

Parotti's third and best novel, Fires in the Sky, is set in Troy before the Greek invasion and is an instruction manual for any author who wants to know about ancient military logistics, as well as having a compelling plot written in a brisk style. The author's central premise is that the Greeks besieged Troy when it was already in a weakened state due to the attrition of years of warfare against its eastern enemies, even though the Trojans won most of those battles. Parotti was a military man, and used that experience to write three works of fiction that make the Trojan War militarily believable.

This is important because there's no hard proof that the Trojan War actually happened. Modern archaeologists been able to prove that something disastrous occurred around the time and place that the ancient Greeks said it did. There is scientific evidence of a plague and a widespread fire, both of which are consistent with people crowding behind a city's walls to avoid besieging armies, which is described in The Iliad. There is inscriptional evidence that a man named Alexandros, the birth name of Paris, was a diplomat, and that there was a prominent Greek family named Atreus, although there is no proof that Agamemnon or Menelaos existed, nor is there any evidence, apart from the myth itself, that a coalition of Greek city-states besieged a city named Troy for ten years.

Parts of the story are highly unlikely. Most of the men described as Greek kings, for instance, ruled a single polis and its surrounding farmlands, and should more accurately be called warlords. Few such men, if any, would want to participate in a 10-year siege that required them to abandon their own little small domains, which they would probably lose if they stayed away for longer than a few months.